"I was never an enemy to the King, nor to any man's person upon the earth. I am in the love that fulfills the law which thinks no evil but loves even enemies, and would have the King saved, and come to knowledge of the truth, and be brought into the fear of the Lord, to receive his wisdom from above, by which all things are made and created, that with that wisdom he may order all things to the glory of God."
George Fox
Journal p. 349

Wednesday, December 28, 2005

"This nation sits at a crossroads. One direction points to the higher road of the rule of law...The other road is the path of least resistance" in which "we pitch the law completely overboard when the mood fits us...[and] close our eyes to the potential lawbreaking...and tear an unfixable hole in our legal system."

Is it Senator Ted Kennedy complaining about President Bush ignoring the laws governing government tapping of phones and "mining" e mails?

No...

It's Tom Delay (currently under indictment) urging that President Clinton be punished for having an affair with an intern.

"It was always expected he would be controversial. Bolton came to the post by the political back door: President Bush appointed him during a congressional recess after it became clear that the battle over his confirmation was going to be a long one.

"The ambassador clearly relishes a fight. He recalled that when he was applying at law firms for a summer job back when he was a young man, one lawyer told him to rethink his desire to be a litigator, saying that most of his interactions every day would be with people who wanted to "rip your clients' lungs out."

'"He asked me, 'Is that really what you want to do?' And I thought about it and I said, 'Yeah, that is exactly what I want to do.' " '

A Quakerly take on this might be that someone who wants to do the work of peace making (ostensively the mission of the United Nations) might wish to have just such an attitude: where else would one dedicated to the values of the Sermon on the Mount want to be, as Jesus wanted to be with the sinners? One who wanted to reconcile differences with other nations and build enduring structures for peace would, of course, want to work among those who hate the United States.

But that is not, of course, why Bolton wants to be with people who dislike the United States. He's not interested in peace making. The United Nations to him, and to the current administration, is really just one more weapon in the global war for American hegemony, it's one more front in the war to keep the Great American Party going. This war has been going on for so long, now, that we are acclimated to it and we don't call it a war, at all. We call it "The American Way of Life.."

Thursday, December 22, 2005

only a lawyer would enjoy reading someting like the intelligent design decision but there is some interesting stuff in there about how far people will go to try to force others to accept their religion. For example, the case relates this interesting incident:

In the midst of this panoply, there arose the astonishing story of an evolution mural that was taken from a classroom and destroyed in 2002 by Larry Reeser, the head of buildings and grounds for the DASD. At the June 2004 meeting, Spahr asked Buckingham where he had received a picture of the evolution mural that had been torn down and incinerated. Jen Miller testified that Buckingham responded:

“I gleefully watched it burn.” (12:118 (J. Miller)). Buckingham disliked the mural because he thought it advocated the theory of evolution, particularly common ancestry. (26:120 (Baksa)). Burning the evolutionary mural apparently was insufficient for Buckingham, however. Instead, he demanded that the teachers agree that there would never again be a mural depicting evolution in any of the classrooms and in exchange, Buckingham would agree to support the purchase of the biology textbook in need by the students. (36:56-57 (Baksa) (emphasis added)).

Case 4:04-cv-02688-JEJ Document 342 Filed 12/20/2005 Page 108 of 139

Buckingham was a school board member and one of the major supporters of the intelligent design program.

Tuesday, December 20, 2005

"...Iraqis once again demonstrated their eagerness for democratic practice by standing in long lines at voting places around the nation. How can the United States possibly leave this job unfinished? To leave is to fail."

"President Bush is making selective use of an opinion poll when he tells people that Iraqis are increasingly upbeat.

"The same poll that indicated a majority of Iraqis believe their lives are going well also found a majority expressing opposition to the presence of U.S. forces, and less than half saying Iraq is better off now than before the war."

This Quaker's take: The lack of integrity snowballs as people gradually lose sight of the Truth, mesmerized by the ventriloquist voice of gods they have created to serve as the benefactors in their fertility cults.

9 "Therefore I bring charges against you again," declares the LORD. "And I will bring charges against your children's children.

10 Cross over to the coasts of Kittim and look, send to Kedar and observe closely; see if there has ever been anything like this:

11 Has a nation ever changed its gods? (Yet they are not gods at all.) But my people have exchanged my/their Glory for worthless idols.

12 Be appalled at this, O heavens, and shudder with great horror," declares the LORD.

Jeremiah 2

"And it's a hard, and it's a hard, it's a hard, and it's a hard,And it's a hard rain's a-gonna fall."

Bob Dylan

Merry Christmas for Christ/The Spirit is born...and dies...and is reborn...in the hearts of all people every day.

"...the Quaker conviction that covenantal participation is based not on doctrinal confession but on hearng and following God's voice."

Friday, December 16, 2005

"WASHINGTON - A year ago, at a Quaker Meeting House in Lake Worth, Fla., a small group of activists met to plan a protest of military recruiting at local high schools. What they didn't know was that their meeting had come to the attention of the U.S. military.

A secret 400-page Defense Department document obtained by NBC News lists the Lake Worth meeting as a “threat” and one of more than 1,500 “suspicious incidents” across the country over a recent 10-month period.

“This peaceful, educationally oriented group being a threat is incredible,” says Evy Grachow, a member of the Florida group called The Truth Project.

“This is incredible,” adds group member Rich Hersh. “It's an example of paranoia by our government,” he says. “We're not doing anything illegal.”

My take on this is that it's too bad we're not actually dangerous...

It's not hard to understand how a peaceful, education oriented group is considered to be a threat. The Jesus movement, a peaceful educatonally oriented group, was a threat to the Jewish establishment of its day for the same reason that Quakers, another peaceful educationally oriented group, was a threat to the Puritan establishment of its day--both worked, in essence, to unite the practices of the society in which they lived with the vision of the covenants with God that they espoused.

But that is not what our current "peace" movement is doing. What Rich Hersh says, above, is true: what we're up to is not "illegal"--it's not even dangerous to anyone except the particular leadership of the moment. We do not pose the kind of danger to our culture that Jesus and George Fox did. Our peace movement is an "anti a particular war" movement. When the war in Iraq is over, when George Bush is gone from the White House, our peace movement will fade back into the woodwork of history, its lasting influence negligible. Not really dangerous, at all.

The Jesus movement and the Quaker movement (the "Lambs War") both sought a fundamental reordering of society from the grassroots. Each sought to turn its culture away from the hollow forms of its day, and from the frustrating, alienating social and spiritual practices and relationships that divided people and made them prey upon one another, rather than praying with one another. Each sought to turn its culture away from materialism and the other "doctrines" that lead people to shove everything except God into that God shaped hole in their heart. Each sought to turn people away from the things they pursued to satisfy themselves which were actually the very things that were making them crazy (Both John the Baptist and James Nayler, if they walked around downtown Portland long enough to acclimate themselves to the cultural trappings, would understand perfectly well what was going on and what the antidote is).

Our current peace movement is not dangerous in this way. Our current peace movement speaks little of the dynamics of our society that make war the natural outcome, not an irrational abberation, of the pursuit of its values. Our current peace movement speaks little to the kind of cultural conditioning that includes things like two national holidays a year that amount to little more than info-mmercials to sell/condition us on the idea that killing people is the way to establish peace and to find security.

Yes, there is a part of this peace movement that is not animated by the simple belief that it's just the war in Iraq that is wrong but, rather, that war is a logical and necessary manifestation of a system that humans have developed to rely upon for their "security" instead of God, who have placed creaturely well being above spiritual well being, who have, to paraphrase Isaiah (and Jeremiah and...), gone over to the dark side.

If the day ever comes that the vision of this element in the peace movement grows into a significant presence then it will be as dangerous to our fallen culture as a whole as the current peace movement seems to be to the current administration.

For the moment, however, the peace movement is not concerned with spirituality and is content to leave the culture of the SUV in place. For the most part the peace movement is as spiritually disoriented as the Bush Administration and for so long as it is will have a similar, transitory impact on the unfolding of events.

Monday, December 12, 2005

"In Washington, Adam Ereli, a State Department spokesman, said theadministration was determined to achieve greenhouse-gas reductions notthrough binding limits but through long-term work to develop cleanertechnologies."

There is, in short, no reason to change the way that ourconditioning/culture keeps people consuming, consuming, consuming tomake some people who control the production wealthier, wealthier andwealthier...

(the Bush administration sent someone named "Adam" out to give theworld this message. What's funny is that it doesn't strike them asironic enough to avoid doing). (I believe, myself, that there are nocoincidences where the Spirit is at work revealing Truth to thoselooking for it.)

The message is that we should just rock on, that there is no reasonfor us to throw off and repent our worship in the fertility cult ofever expanding capitalism and development...there is no reason for ourparty to ever end. That's what say our high priests of prosperity andmaterialism. (we don't pay temple prostitutes to ensure we get a goodharvest, rather we pay investment counselors and brokers and insuranceagents to ensure we get a good return on our investment.

Because technology will save us (this is not really a new message, isit?)...we don't have to save ourselves from the consequences of ourdebauchery...machines will save us--but, of course, even if their planworks out they will only "save" the earth, not our souls...there'sstill the matter of the impact/karma of the debauchery that will workout in our personal futures.

The Bush administration (and the bi partisan prosperity machine itwhose agenda it pursues) assures us, again, that there is no reason to curtailthe profits by easing off on the ruthless exploitation of the earth andof other humans. There is no reason to find simpler and healthier ways tolive (finding, for example, things other than SUVs to fill the Godshaped holes in our hearts). We can also make additional profits bythe technical means we will use to keep the party going!!! Machineswill make it possible for us to orgy on while continuing the exploitation of theearth and other human beings. It's win-win.

Rhetorical question: where is John Woolman when we need him?

Rhetorical answer: we all have to be John Woolman, ourselves.

"In all our cares about worldly treasures, let us steadily bear inmind that riches possessed by children who do not truly serve God arelikely to prove snares that may more grievously entangle them in thatspirit of selfishness and exaltation which stands in opposition toreal peace and happiness, and renders those who submit to theinfluence of it enemies to the cross of Christ."

What is this blog about?

Politics and spirituality don't mix...but they meet. Here I look at political events as they appear by my Light and how the rejection of the testimonies of the Religious Society of Friends--Simplicity, Peace, Integrity, Community and Equality--is the sand upon which our political house is built.

By the way--religion is far less likely to harm civil politics as civil politics is likely to degrade religion. How do you think that flag got stuck up in the corner of all those churches?

Lets just keep the two as separate as we can--so we don't start hanging one another in the town square.

What's all this stuff about Lily?

Those who know me are aware that I am the most cynical person one can ever meet. Anyone looking for the worst of motives from human beings, for the bottom-of-the-barrel analysis of any situation only need talk to me to get it.

Lily Tomlin once said something along the lines of "No matter how cynical I get, it's hard to keep up."

When I see someone in politics doing something that sets a new standard of hypocrisy or blazes new trails into the territory of a lack of integrity, I will write a little blurb and award them a "Lily"--my own personal little prize for their achievement.

And by the way, the fact that I am cynical does not make me pessimistic. On the contrary, I am the most optimistic person you will ever meet. One of the sources of my optimism is that I am so rarely wrong about my cynical takes that I am confident that the ground for my cynicism points the way to the solution to the problem.

The situation can be fixed, in other words. Find the way and you will have found God, for it is the sacred, and not the profane, that is in the details of reconciliation.

About Me

I am a convinced Beanite Friend, a member of Bridge City Friends Meeting, Willamette Quarterly Meeting and North Pacific Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends.
Notwithstanding the doubts of some who claim the name, I am a Christian who does a Buddhist practice and believes that God talks to everyone, all the time.
I have worked in the judicial branch of government, as well as being a trial lawyer, a public school teacher (counselor and coach), a kite merchant, and a Marine Corp Sergeant.
I am currently working as a consultant to public and private agencies on issues of child welfare, juvenile justice, and substance abuse treatment courts.